WA Cat Laws

The major problem with telling everyone that they should bring all free-roaming cat into a shelter for ‘processing’ is that they might just do exactly that. And the result is not terribly difficult to imagine. A little over a year ago, cat and welfare groups in the state of WA celebrated as their much […]

Dardanup Shire Council had recently increased the powers of rangers to seize owned cats, making major additions to the existing state-wide Cat Act. The ‘Keeping and Control of Cats Local Law 2014’, was to include confinement, with cats found to be not ‘controlled’ by their owners caught by rangers and their owners fined. 2.1 Cats in public places (1) A cat […]

Remember back when WA rescue groups were lobbying for cat laws and they said the laws would mean we no longer had a cat problem because all the cats would be desexed and so, no kittens? Cat laws were the answer, remember? So we got the laws. We’ve had them now for 11 months. Last year’s […]

The WA Cat Act is the jewel in the ‘mandatory desexing’ zealot’s crown. As legislation it included everything that a cat-law advocate could have dreamed of; – it was enacted state-wide and every council was required to make provisions for it; to include it in their operations and to resource the enforcement of it. […]

The picture above is the impounds (unclaimed/unidentified) for a single WA pound. It doesn’t take a genius to see that before these cats were impounded and brought into the pound under the directive of these new laws – and their lives were being threatened with ‘euthanasia’ because ‘overpopulation’ – that they were living with someone […]

The two biggest champions of WA’s new cat laws, were without a doubt the RSPCA WA and the Cat Haven. I’ve requested from the WA government, the full list of grant recipients and the amounts given. And you’ll never guess who the two biggest benefactors were? Go on. Have a guess… See the full […]

The biggest failure of the cat laws that have been rolled out across WA, is that they encourage and increase the impoundment and killing of cats, while claiming to reduce the impoundment and killing of cats. When the story we tell the community is that there is only two types of cats – those […]

What’s happening in WA during the first month of new cat laws? Overwhelmed pounds and shelters forced to take large numbers of animals during kitten season. Good one #WACatLaws! WA cat pounds hiring extra staff. Good one #WACatLaws! Healthy + well fed = not lost. But now cats are in the sheltering system – the same system which […]

Offering councils animal management services and impoundment facilities is a quick and relatively straightforward way for charity run shelters to make reliable revenue. It is no coincidence then, that often the animal welfare groups who lobby hardest for laws which drive up pet impounds, are those who run shelters and are set to benefit most […]

It’s funny how information is presented to the public. I’d assume reading this notification today (1st November – and the first day of the WA Cat Act) that it meant that the RSPCA WA was stepping away from cat impoundment – leaving it up to local councils. You know, because they’re in the animal […]